


To be Family

by Aly_H



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: After The Silver Hand Quest, Blood, Companions, Companions Questline, F/M, First Impressions, Grief, Helping Wash Off Blood, Processing, Some Canon-bending, Spoilers for the Companions Questline, Werewolf, Werewolf transformation and change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 07:10:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15505074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aly_H/pseuds/Aly_H
Summary: Set immediately after "The Silver Hand" quest, Vilkas finds himself taking care of the Jorrvaskr's newest werewolf as she processes what happened and tries to sort out how she feels. Meanwhile he contemplates his own changing feelings towards the Dragonborn Arainna.





	To be Family

**Author's Note:**

> This is written with my Dragonborn, Arainna. Ari eventually marries Vilkas but this story is set before either of them have admitted their feelings to each other.

Vilkas set the bowl of water on the table in front of the girl, setting himself in the chair in front of the one she sat in with a heavy sigh. Then he pressed the cup into her hand.

She accepted it with a nod and drank a little, shivering despite the cloak around her shoulders and the fire in the hearth. Neither of them was willing to break the silence that stretched between them.

Aela had retreated to mourn Skjor in private. She would need time and space before she could face the rest of the Jorrvaskr – and the ghost left by her lover’s absence.

It had left the newest member of their misguided little family looking lost and staring empty-eyed around the hall on her own. She’d still had blood at the corner of her mouth. Caught and tangled in her hair. Staining beneath her nails with what was left of the Silver Hand the two women had found in their hunt. Dressed lightly in only loose pants and a shirt too large to fit with the sort of modesty the woman usually preferred.

Arainna was a small woman – completely dwarfed in his fur cloak that he’d wrapped around her after getting her to sit – with her long black hair tangled rather than in its usual neat braided bun. Her blue eyes still lost in the distance of her thoughts as she focused on the fire rather.

It was a good thing Aela had returned them in the dead of night. The guard would not have overlooked the state of either of them in better light. Particularly not with so many stories of vampire attacks.

 _It’s not been an easy change and she’s even worse than your brother was_ , Skjor had said before he’d gone to follow Aela in protecting the newest werewolf in their pack – Vilkas had gone to confront them for making her one of them at all.

And she was being left to process it – and her grief - on her own.

So he had brought her to the privacy of his own room, wrapped her up in his furs because he hadn’t thought to stop and fetch her own belongings from the room she shared with the other whelps and set about doing what he could to make it easier.

Taking up the cloth from the bowl, he dipped it in the warm water and wrung it out before dabbing it gently where blood had dried on her lips and face.

“Your control gets better,” he knew his tone was still rough, a little too harsh with his frustrations at the situation. Not that gentle was something he knew how to make his voice but he still tried for his shield-sister.

“I didn’t just dream that did I?” she finally spoke, though her voice was barely a whisper.

“No.”

It wasn’t a comforting answer but there’s very little that’s comforting in being a werewolf.

The blood in her veins is still too new for her to sort through the scents in the air the way he could: The scent of lavender soap still clinging stubbornly to her hair beneath the rest of it. His brother’s snoring in the other room too soft to be heard through the thick walls by a human but clear and comforting in its familiarity. Kodlak’s pacing as he turns over how to respond to what has happened. The sounds and scents of the Jorrvaskr and its inhabitants signaling _home_ to him as they had since he had first been gifted the Beast-blood.

It will take some days for her to learn to sort through the new sensations.

She was a fine Companion but not every Companion was suited to controlling the blood. And Aela and Skjor had not consulted Kodlak on that question as tradition called for. Some part of him suspected, though, that she would learn that control swiftly enough.

“What were you thinking, Arainna?”

He took her hands in his to clean the blood from them next, gently as he could, and to pretend not to notice the regret caught in those blue eyes.

Vilkas remembered spotting the pretty Imperial in the shadows of the Jorrvaskr what felt like an age ago as he spoke with Kodlak about his own difficulties with the beast-blood.

She’d smiled and barely stopped herself from curtsying in greeting when Kodlak had spoken to her. Like some kind of proper Cyrodiil lady from the empire’s capital. He’d seen the aborted movement and frowned at it.

A bit of dented armor and a sword barely sharp enough to cut couldn’t make a pampered lady into a Companion.

Back then her hands had still been soft. The starts of the callouses he felt beneath his own fingers had begun to build but her fingers had still not the rough swordswoman’s that he was so carefully holding now.

She’d even apologized for wasting his time in the training yard before they’d begun when Kodlak asked he test her.

He’d expected to see a few clumsy swings and have it end with him telling the old man that he’d been wrong about the stranger having any potential. Instead she had shown herself to be adequate.

Her technique more unsteady by a lack of confidence than an absence of skill. She had a few of those poor habits that some developed when they had a teacher unfamiliar with teaching (he’d guess someone much larger and with a preference for two-handed weapons) but nothing that could not be corrected through training.

And he’d insured the newest whelp got plenty of it with her sword and shield too.

Still, it had been the side eye the whelp had given when he told her to fetch his sword to Eorlund that had earned her a real chance at his respect though. She’d known she was being hassled but still opted to say nothing at being made to earn her place further.

She was an easy woman to warm to, even with his misgivings at bringing a stranger into the Hall at a time when the Circle itself was split. He’d liked the way she smiled and ducked her head to laugh when he made some jest.

The way she’d thrown up on his shoes when he’d walked her back from the Bannered Mare the night after she’d slain the dragon at the watch tower had been a little less charming.

“Don’t know that I was,” she finally answered, drawing her hands back from his. Some foolish part of him wished to keep hold of them but she needed to be allowed her independence now that she was reacting again, he knew that. “I wanted to prove myself – to show that the Companions really are my family now.”

He glanced up to her expression - something in her face suggested she wasn’t trying to prove that truth to them so much as to herself. 

“You’re a fool,” he informed her.

She’d been their Shield-Sister for some time now, being a werewolf wasn’t going to make her more family, all it did was get her entangled deeper in the problems at the heart of the Circle…though, perhaps _that_ is what family was supposed to mean?

A tiny smile graced her lips – weak still but it was honest – “You’re probably right.”

“You should go wash your hair,” he said, sitting back. “And get dressed properly. I’m not explaining to Ria why you’re in my room dressed like that. Come back once you’ve done that – I’m sure you have questions. I’ll see if I can’t find where Tilma hid the sweetrolls this time.”

This time there was a slightly larger smile and what might qualify as _almost_ half a laugh, her gaze lingering on his for a moment before she nodded, “…thank you, Vilkas.”


End file.
